Gardening May Repeatedly Activate the Frontal Pole

Previous epidemiological studies have indicated the effectiveness of gardening and other activities for dementia prevention. Our previous study using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) suggested seeding and watering tasks could induce greater activation than other gardening tasks in the prefrontal area of older adults, but repetitive effects were not fully addressed. The objective of this NIRS study was to investigate the effects of repeated gardening tasks on activation of the frontal pole (FP). We measured oxygenated hemoglobin (Oxy-Hb) values in the FP while 24 healthy right-handed older adults (60 - 73 years) performed a seeding task, a watering task, and a motor programming task (FAB 3) of the Frontal Assessment Battery (FAB). Each task was repeated five times. After the fourth trial, comparison of maximum Oxy-Hb values among the three tasks demonstrated that, in the medial FP, activation during the two gardening tasks was significantly or marginally significantly greater than activation during the FAB 3 task. The results may be attributable to differences in the number of sensory information sources and the number of stimulus-oriented (SO) attention switches and SO thoughts. No significant differences were observed in activation in the lateral FP. Comparison of maximum Oxy-Hb values among five trials within each task showed sustained medial FP activation in all tasks, while the watering task and FAB 3 task showed significantly decreased activation in a portion of the lateral FP. This was possibly due to differences in the number of times switching between SO attention and stimulus-independent (SI) attention, and differences in frequency of changes of visual dimension weighting. Also, in the gardening tasks, the participants needed to respond to changes in the external environment;it can be speculated that the need for collating external information corresponding to changes in the external environment induced repeated FP activation during the gardening tasks.

A Training Effect by Three-Month Watering on the Frontal Pole Activation of Healthy Older Adults

The effectiveness of training prefrontal lobe function for suppressing cognitive decline or improving cognitive function has been reported. Some epidemiological studies suggested that gardening activities can contribute to suppression of cognitive decline. In our previous studies using functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), we reported the possibility of frontal pole (FP) activation of healthy older adults during gardening activities in the quasi-laboratory setting. The objective of this study was to examine the impacts of a three-month continual practice of the watering task in the actual gardening settings on the FP activation of healthy older adults. The participants were 18 right-handed healthy older adults without a diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment or dementia (M = 71.7 years ± SD 5.0, range: 63 - 84 years) who lived independently at home. We asked the participants to continue watering at home for three months in the same way as the research task in the fNIRS measurement. After a three-month intervention, the participants’ task performance improved compared with that of pre-intervention. In addition, the Oxy-Hb values in the right lateral FP during the third trial in the post-intervention measurement were significantly greater compared with the pre-intervention measurement. This study suggested that even a gardening activity with a small number of processes such as watering, if the activity is continued for a certain period of time, can suppress the decline of the FP activation of healthy older adults. Combination of various gardening activities has the potential to be a further cognitive training for activating the FP.